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Protect an ex-KGB agent: Revive your church

Author of the article:

Douglas Todd

Publishing date:

August 23, 2009 • 4 minute read

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Protect a societal outcast: Revive your church. That’s the surprise lesson Lutheran Rev. Richard (Hergie) Hergesheimer has enjoyed learning since he and his congregation made national headlines this summer by giving sanctuary to ex-KGB agent Mikhail Lennikov.

Protect an ex-KGB agent: Revive your churchBack to video

The small Lutheran congregation in east Vancouver has been jolted into a new state of vitality since making its controversial move on June 2 to help Lennikov avoid deportation by giving him a bed in the church basement.

Although supported by many, First Lutheran Church‘s provision of 11 weeks of sanctuary to Lennikov has caused critics to accuse Hergesheimer of disgracing what they call his “increasingly irrelevant” denomination.

Hergesheimer relishes the battle, since it’s a moral one. And he’s getting a kick out of the spinoff benefits for his church. “We couldn’t have orchestrated anything to bring together the church as this has,” said Hergesheimer, who has been at First Lutheran Church, on the corner of 42nd Avenue and Wales, since 1994.

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“Lutherans make up only one per cent of the population and don’t normally make much noise. But now people are admiring we’ve taken a stand. They’re caught up in the notion of the church, which has no prestige or power, standing up to the government.”

Of course, Hergesheimer didn’t advocate offering sanctuary to the former Soviet agent just to bring more people into his pews. After all, even though the Christian church has a long history of offering sanctuary to people considered outlaws by secular authorities, it remains technically illegal in Canada. Hergesheimer is aware it could lead to tax repercussions. Still, during what are normally any church’s summer doldrums, Hergesheimer has appreciated seeing an average 25-per-cent jump in attendance at his neighbourhood church, for a typical Sunday total of about 100.

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“It’s been an amazing thing to watch,” he said. “People are coming out to support us, and many long-time members have been suddenly radicalized.”

The 64-year-old cleric has persuasive logic for protecting Lennikov, whose wife and teenager live in Burnaby, from deportation. Hergesheimer believes the ex-KGB agent, who says he was little more than a clerk specializing in languages before he resigned from the service in 1988, is “being punished for telling the truth” about his past to Canadian immigration officials almost 10 years ago.

Even though Canada can lawfully reject foreigners it considers a threat to the security of our country — and some suspicious Canadians have accused Lennikov of remaining a “sleeper agent” — the Lutheran congregation has the common sense to believe he is no longer a threat to the country, if he ever was.

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What’s more, many protesting politicians from the Bloc, NDP and Liberal Partybelieve Lennikov could be punished in Russia for talking about the KGB, which now goes under a new name, to Canada’s spy agencies.

In addition, Hergesheimer joins many high-level international officials in saying Canada’s “closed” refugee system lacks a fair appeal process.

It’s a good argument that has also been carefully advanced by my colleague, Vancouver Sun columnist Peter McKnight.

Hergesheimer’s Christian-inspired ethical position seems to make sense for most Canadians. Angus Reid pollsters recently found Canadians by a three-to-one margin would like to see Lennikov, who also happens to be skilled and educated and speaks English, stay in Canada. In the year that Lennikov and his family have been attending First Lutheran, Hergesheimer has formed a bond with the computer software specialist who had enrolled in a PhD program at the University of B.C.

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While Lennikov told me Hergesheimer is an “amazing person” who “immediately hooks people with his openness and humour,” Hergesheimer goes one step further. He considers Lennikov “a better man than I am,” filled with honesty and integrity. “The people just love him to death.”

Enjoying the high-profile battle over what he sees as the Christian principle of forgiveness, Hergesheimer has given as good as he’s got when law-and-order Canadians have told him he should be “ashamed” for protecting an outlaw and former “Red” Communist.

When a Ukrainian-Canadian academic from Ontario told Hergesheimer that the denomination’s founder, Martin Luther, would be spinning in his grave if he knew a Lutheran congregation was safeguarding a former member of a secret-service agency that once persecuted Ukrainians and Lutherans, Hergesheimer retorted with a shot of church history.

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As a would-be reformer of the Roman Catholic church of his day,

Martin Luther

(1483-1546) was himself given sanctuary. A German Christian prince protected Luther from persecution by the Holy Roman Emperor, who declared the outspoken theologian an outlaw deserving of death.

In the end, some decent Christian principles are behind the efforts of Hergesheimer’s suddenly feisty congregation to open their church to a long-ago spy who seems to be trying to make an honest go of it in British Columbia.

For Hergesheimer and his congregation, it basically comes down to a corny question: What would Jesus do?Their answer: Jesus spent a great deal of time with social outcasts who had made mistakes.

Whether it’s a former alcoholic trying to start a new life or a divorced man trying to connect with his children, Hergesheimer says, Jesus gives everybody the right to “a second chance.”

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